Model-independent Measurement of the Atmospheric Muon Neutrino Energy Spectrum up to 2.5 PeV

• Main Authors: Hoinka, Tobias, Soedingrekso, Jan, Börner, Mathis
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2019
• Subjects: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena astro-ph.HE; FOS Physical sciences; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1909.05129; https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.05129

The IceCube Observatory at the South Pole allows the measurement of the diffuse neutrino flux. The assumption of specific flux parametrizations limits the range of spectral shapes. Given the increasing statistics of the data recorded, model-independent unfolding approaches can overcome these limitations. In this contribution, a model-independent approach to estimate the muon neutrino flux between 125 GeV and 2.5 PeV is presented. In order to extract muon neutrinos from the data taken by the detector, a machine-learning-based method is employed. This yields an efficient muon neutrino sample with a purity of over 99 %. The spectrum is estimated by a Likelihood-based unfolding technique involving a novel binning scheme using a decision tree on three years of IceCube data. This measurement provides the first model-independent muon neutrino spectrum for multiple years in this energy regime. : Presented at the 36th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2019). See arXiv:1907.11699 for all IceCube contributions